Company Partners has been a blessing for those businesses who are looking for business partners, mentors and investors, but what if you need to reorganise your business to make it more profitable, or to grow?
 
I’ve been helping companies that have approached us for a while now, but eventually there is only so much of my [...]

I went along to The London Funding Conference at the British Library last night and was again impressed by the Library’s ability to host these events.
In football terms the conference had scored a couple own goals, with over-long sponsor’s talks during the first half, but came storming back to win with truly excellent insights [...]

A few days ago the office of the Prime Minister sent a letter to many small businesses and SME organisations explaining that a new online tool called Contracts Finder has been launched that will show all government tender opportunities.
At the same time he said they would eliminate the prequalification questionnaire (PQQ) for low value orders [...]

There’s a common misconception of the typical entrepreneur being a charismatic individual business person, not needing or wanting a partner’s help in driving forward his all conquering venture.
Think Richard Branson, Bill Gates, or the latest film idol, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame.
Yes they were the front men and there’s no doubt that they steered the [...]

The first question is should it cost anything? After all it is the Investors who have money, so why should they charge in order to pitch to them?
Well, actually almost all Investors don’t charge a penny for entrepreneurs to present an investment case to them.
Investors are not looking to make money from people presenting [...]

I was putting together a business plan workshop for some MBA students the other day and looked for a couple of quotes to illustrate points. There are, as you can imagine, quotes for everything, sometimes contradictory.
There is one area though that no one disagrees with and it happens to be a pet issue with me. [...]

Last night I attended the keynote event of Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW), yes it’s this week, how could you miss it? Sitting in a packed conference centre of the British Library, I looked around at the alert eager faces of budding Entrepreneurs and thought this has to be the future for Britain.
Tom Bewick, the CEO [...]

Last week I talked about having a simple sales & marketing plan for your business. It doesn’t have to be particularly fancy, but you should have bounced ideas around with your team (find someone to do this with if a sole trader) and written it down. The act of documenting it is important, clears up [...]

Hands up those who have more sales than they can handle? It does happen, but for most small businesses it is a constant battle to get customers.
You’ve got a good product or service; in fact you are probably very proud of the quality and cost effectiveness of your offering. But sales don’t seem to be [...]

At one time business incubators seemed to be mentioned in the business section of every newspaper. Now they have a much lower profile and you might be forgiven for wondering what had became of them.
Since they tend to be focused on high growth, technology or knowledge-based industries, it’s not surprising that during the hay day [...]